Play,
Pause, Stop, Record: Why Presidents Taped

The
Case of Richard Nixon

From the moment
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the thick Oval Office floor drilled to
install wiring, to the bugged lamp on Truman’s desk, the manually-operated
Dictabelt system of the Kennedy-Johnson years, to Richard Nixon’s massive
3,700 hours of tapes—the disclosure of which hastened his downfall—these
six presidents have left as part of their legacies one of the most
controversial sets of government sources. Undoubtedly, the tapes will occupy
the interest of historians for decades more, as still more than a third of the
total hours of the tapes of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations
remain unreleased to the public as of this writing. For these “indefatigable
listeners,” these surreptitiously recorded hours with top aides,
journalists, and former and future leaders help to confirm what we have
already learned from textual records, but sometimes this added texture
modifies our understanding of even decades-past events. [1]

In
particular, it is perhaps ironic that the greatest quantity of these
presidential recordings, by Richard Nixon, is also the least utilized or
understood, apart from their starring role in Watergate. Despite hundreds of
publications since the 1970s that have mentioned the Nixon tapes and a flurry
of theories from administration officials and Nixon scholars and agonistes
alike about why Nixon decided to bug himself, still the most commonly asked
question about the taping system has to do with why Nixon decided to tape
himself in the first place.[2] Through technological advances, we can now more easily listen to
and transcribe these tapes and we can clearly hear Nixon himself on the taping
system describing the origin, installation, and potential uses of his taping
system. These conversations largely corroborate Nixon’s memoir claims and
the details of the taping system itself, but also hint at the darker
motivations and political uses of recorded conversations.

These tapes
comprise 4 conversations recorded between February 16 and February 23, 1972
in the Oval Office (OVAL). We have produced transcripts for these
conversations and have made them available on this page. In addition, we have
also produced links to mp3 audio files (the type found at the Nixon Presidential
Library) as well as high quality audio that we have produced. We encourage
visitors to this site to listen to the audio while reviewing the transcripts.

In
his memoirs, Nixon listed several reasons behind his decision to record his
conversations throughout the executive offices. The primary reasons were
administrative and historical, part of the president’s desire to make his
administration “the best chronicled in history.” Nixon recalled that he
“wanted a record of every major meeting” and that an earlier system of
taking notes, “ranging from verbatim transcripts of important national
security sessions to ‘color reports’ of ceremonial events…proved
cumbersome, because it was not always convenient or appropriate to have
someone in the room taking notes." [3] From the revelation of the taping
system in 1973 until his death in 1994, Nixon consistently argued that his
reasons for taping were primarily historical. Nixon emphasized that the
secrecy of the system overrode any objections related to right to privacy
concerns of those taped, and that the benefits he perceived in terms of later
writing his memoirs and having a record of major meetings overrode the costs
and staff time to maintain the system. That the taping system had other
potentially useful political functions should not be doubted, and Nixon did
not deny such alternatives.

For
Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, the historical utility of
the taping system was only “a secondary benefit,” while the “primary
intent” of taping conversations to protect Nixon, like earlier presidents
who had taped their conversations, “from the convenient lapses of memory of
his associates.” The purpose of the tapes, “was not,” Haldeman argued,
“to provide tapes for historians to peruse, but for the President's use
alone—for reference when visitors… made statements that conflicted with
their private talks with the President.” Haldeman noted “a secondary
benefit” of the tapes, for providing Nixon “with valuable reference
material for his own use.” The chief of staff stressed that the tapes were
“never for the use of historians." [4]

In
the first conversation captured on tape, Assistant to the President Alexander
Butterfield briefed the president on the recently installed taping system and
described how it worked, confirming details tape experts have long known.
Butterfield told the president how the system was both a sound-activated
taping system and tied to the presidential locator system.
[5] Butterfield said, “You’re wearing the locator right now and
you’re in the office,” and because the system operated by “voice
activation” the president didn’t need “to turn it on and off.” Nixon
inquired if it would be possible to expand the system, which at the time only
operated in the Oval Office. Echoing the rationale he would express years
later in his memoir account, Nixon stressed the reason behind his decision to
tape: “You see, the purpose of this is to have the whole thing on the file
for professional reasons.” Butterfield acknowledged that it was possible to
expand the system, and for record-keeping purposes the recordings “could be
used to make notes.” Butterfield told the president that he had gone over
the potential use of the tapes for note taking with Chief of Staff H.R.
“Bob” Haldeman, and noted that the system was an office secret because,
“There are only five people who know about it, outside of Haldeman, then you
and me." [6]

In
another conversation later that same morning with Butterfield and Haldeman,
Nixon had obviously by then considered the potential uses of the taping system
as Butterfield had noted earlier, including making transcriptions of the
tapes. “Mums the whole
word. I will not be transcribed,” he ordered. And, in case for some reason
material from the tapes was needed, perhaps, as Nixon noted, “maybe we want
to put out something that's positive, maybe we need something just to be sure
that we can correct the record,” Haldeman noted that, rather than mention
the existence of a taping system, the correction would be “on the basis of
‘Butterfield’s notes’ or ‘the president's notes’ or ‘my notes.’"
[7]

In
addition, Nixon and Haldeman discussed additional potential uses of the
surreptitious taping system; in this case, to review tapes related to the
disclosure that Undersecretary of the Interior Fred Russell had been “fired."
[8] In this conversation, Nixon suggested to Haldeman using the tapes
regarding instructions on how Russell’s resignation cum firing should be
portrayed to the press. Haldeman was clearly enthusiastic about the tapes and
advised the president “let’s use the recording,” but suggested the use
of tapes “on the basis of your notes.” Nixon again expressed his desire to
avoid transcription from the tapes: “I don’t want you to transcribe those
unless it’s important. See?" [9]

In
the last noteworthy conversation that mentions the taping system, President
Nixon contemplated using the taped conversations to both inform press
briefings by Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler and as a means of record keeping.
Nixon forgetfully asked Haldeman if presidential aide Alexander Butterfield
knew of the taping system that had been installed three days earlier.
Responding incredulously to the president’s apparent lapse of memory,
Haldeman pointed out to the president, “Yes, sir. He put it in.” In terms
of utilizing the tapes for record keeping, Nixon explicitly stated: “I
don’t want anything transcribed unless I say so.” Haldeman concurred and
hinted at keeping the system secret: “That’s right…not even transcribe
it. Tell [Butterfield] to go back and listen to it and just make notes off of
it…As if he had been sitting here making notes.”[10]

In
these conversations dealing with the installation and operation of the taping
system, all link the use of recordings to produce meeting records or notes for
the file. Confirming what he said in his memoirs after the fact, in one
conversation Nixon lamented the problems of having a note taker in meetings to
Haldeman: “It just doesn’t work to have somebody be in here every
minute.” [11]
The sheer volume of memoranda of conversation (“Memcons”), telephone
conversation (“Telcons”) transcripts, meeting notes, diaries, and
memoranda for the record, and millions of pages of textual documents produced
by the administration attest to Nixon’s desire for thorough, reliable, and
accurate record—but also a record flattering for the administration.

Nixon
felt that secrecy of the taping system was paramount. Nixon explicitly told
both Haldeman and Butterfield that the tapes were not to be transcribed
without his express orders, minimizing the chance that someone could suspect
that they were being taped. At least initially, the political uses of the
tapes and a desire to control the depictions of meetings were also on the
president’s mind. Two of the conversations discuss record keeping and
political matters such as the “firing” of Fred Russell in one recording,
and Nixon’s desire to reduce regional social spending in the other. Also,
despite Nixon’s best efforts at maintaining secrecy, author Anthony Summers
concluded that some astute foreign dignitaries and domestic personages, such
as John Dean, suspected that they were being taped, especially since Nixon
ended the thorough use of note takers after the installation of the taping
system, even for lengthy, detailed meetings, which surprised some visitors
that Nixon appeared to not want any summary of the meeting. [12]

The
above conversations also confirm some of the reasons behind the choice of an
automatic taping system. Later describing the tapes as an “objective
record,” Nixon stated: “I thought that recording only selected
conversations would completely undercut the purpose of having the taping
system; if our tapes were going to be an objective record of my presidency,
they could not have such an obviously self-serving bias. I did not want to
have to calculate whom or what or when I would tape.” [13]
Historians have largely concurred with Alexander Butterfield that the
automatic taping system was the natural choice since the president was
technologically challenged. [14]
Although not conclusive, the first conversation corroborates both Nixon’s
and Butterfield’s claims. Nixon seemed pleased when Butterfield told him
that the president would not need to turn the system on or off and Nixon
referred to having the tapes for “professional reasons.”

In
his memoirs, Nixon stated: “[B]efore long I accepted [the taping] as part of
the surroundings.” [15]
The conversations confirm that Nixon was not consciously aware of the taping
system most of the time, at least not after the first few weeks of taping. In
conversation 456-5, Nixon could not remember that Alexander Butterfield had
supervised the installation of the system, and all three of the significant
mentions of the taping system are from the first week of operation, which
began on February 16, 1971. It is possible that there are more taped
conversations that mention the taping system between the start of taping and
the current end of publicly available conversations in November 1972. If so,
they have remained undiscovered among the thousands of total hours of
recordings. Despite such a remote possibility, the logs produced by the
National Archives and Records Administration have proven very reliable and
accurate, a testament to the thousands of hours that went into their
production. It is true that there was another minor mention, an offhand
reference to taping, in a conversation from April 1971, but after that point
there’s no reason to believe Nixon did anything but forget about the taping
system through at least November 1972.

If
the Nixon White House pre-tape systems of “color reports” and other note
taking methods were quickly recognized as lacking, why did the administration
wait more than two full years after Nixon inauguration in January 1969 to
install a taping system? Henry Kissinger offers one explanation that regarding
planned incursions into
Laos
, Nixon did not want a repeat of the public relations fiasco that accompanied
the disclosure of secret raids into
Cambodia
the year before. [16]
However, Nixon had forcefully ordered the removal of President Johnson’s
Dictabelt taping system in one of his first acts before assuming the
presidency, so why the change of heart? Was such a taping system so much more
appealing in 1971 than in 1969? Unfortunately, the tapes themselves only
confirm the reasoning behind taping, primarily historical but also political,
but do not delve into the issue of timing. [17]
Could Nixon have been anticipating the seeds in rapprochement with the
People’s Republic of
China
to sprout, as they did haltingly through the Pakistani channel up to April
1971, two months after the installation of the taping system? Was the decision
based more on moves in
Vietnam
, long recognized by scholars to have been the administration’s
“crucible?” Could the reason have been much more mundane—keeping
advisors in check, as Haldeman has suggested, and as the tapes partially
confirm? Despite so much uncertainty regarding the timing of the installation
of the taping system, its demise is well-known. With Richard Nixon in the
hospital, Haldeman’s successor—Chief of Staff Alexander Haig—ordered the
deactivation and removal of the taping system within hours of Butterfield’s
July 1973 testimony to the Ervin committee which revealed the existence of the
taping system in the process of its escalating Watergate investigation.

Henry
Kissinger, Nixon’s National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State,
questioned the benefit of the tapes:

What
could anyone uninitiated make objectively of the collection of reflections and
interjections, the strange indiscretions mixed with high-minded
pronouncements, the observations hardly germane to the issue of the moment but
reflecting the prejudices of Nixon’s youth, all choreographed by the only
person in the room who knew that the tape system existed? …The significance
of every exchange turns on its context and an appreciation of Nixon’s
shifting moods and wayward tactics. Remove these and you have but random
musings—fascinating, entertaining, perhaps, but irrelevant for the most part
as the basis for the President’s actions. [18]

Kissinger’s
warnings to the contrary, if one cannot accept the observations,
justifications, and decision-making process by the primary policymakers
themselves in the moment, what historical source can be considered truly
valid? It is difficult to believe Kissinger’s argument that Nixon
choreographed all or even most of his conversations. This is not to say that
Nixon did not on occasion manipulate conversations to get viewpoints on
record—he did, as Kissinger describes in Years
of Upheaval—but it is a dubious assertion that the president was in
control of all of his conversations, especially ones in which he had little to
no speaking part.[19]

Beyond
this criticism, the richness of the Nixon tapes has also proven to be a
double-edged sword. In order to utilize the tapes for historical purposes,
researchers must listen to tapes in real time and painstakingly transcribe
audio that ranges in quality from somewhat decent to unintelligible.[20]
Many aspects of Nixon’s personal idiosyncrasies and working style come into
play when attempting to produce reasonably accurate transcripts of important
conversations. Besides acoustic problems and background noises, such as the
notorious ticking clock in the Executive Office Building, Nixon’s penchant
for listening to music while he worked, movement in the office, problematic
microphone placement, and poor quality recording materials has meant that some
conversations will never be intelligible, no matter how much time, money,
energy, or technological assets are at one’s disposal. [21]
Stuttering, mumbling, verbal tics such as Nixon’s frequent “my point
is…you see my point,” low or quiet talking, and the occasional recording
of foreign languages, accents, and place names only increase the difficulty of
producing faithful and accurate transcripts. [22]
Regardless, after more than three decades, there is an untapped treasure trove
awaiting those who take on the challenge—even on topics as small as
Nixon’s decision to tape. For many scholars and casual listeners alike,
Richard Nixon has truly been the gift that keeps giving, and with over 1,100
hours of Nixon tapes still to be released, this will continue to be the case
for many years. [23]
At least now we can understand the origin of the taping system, and straight
from the mouth of the man who ordered its installation.

[1] Regarding
the revelation of the Nixon administration tapes, Henry A. Kissinger once
mused, “…As for their value for historical research by some indefatigable
listeners, it must be doubted.” See Henry A. Kissinger, Years
of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1982), 111.

[2]
For a discussion of Nixon agonistes, see
the John Leonard New York Times review
of Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The
Crisis of the Self-Made Man, October 15, 1970.

[4]
H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of
Power with Joesph DiMona, (New York: Times Books, 1978),192. Nixon and Haldeman both analyzed why earlier presidents had
decided to tape. According to Nixon, his predecessor Lyndon Johnson
“had a taping system for his office phone, his bedroom phone, the
phone at Camp David, the phone at his ranch in
Johnson City
, and the phone at his office in
Austin
. In addition to the phone equipment, he had room microphones placed in
the Cabinet Room and in the private office next to the Oval Office. At
one point there was also a recording device that could pick up
conversations in the room outside the Oval Office where Johnson's
visitors would wait before being ushered in to see him. The Johnson
system was operated manually, which permitted him to decide which
conversations to record… Johnson thought that my decision to remove
his taping system was a mistake; he felt his tapes were invaluable in
writing his memoirs.” Nixon, RN,
501; Haldeman was less idealistic, as the above quotes show. It is worth
nothing that Haldeman later distanced himself from The
Ends of Power in his later years and released his daily diaries on
CD-ROM and in annotated book form in an attempt to correct the record.

[5]
The presidential locator system was basically a pager the
president wore so the Secret Service could keep track of the chief
executive’s whereabouts and deliver the “football” of nuclear
launch codes at a moment’s notice.

[6]
Conversation 450-1 between
Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield, February 16, 1971,
Unknown time between 7:56 am and 8:58 am in the Oval Office. It is
unclear as to the idenity of the five people to whom Butterfield
referred “outside of Haldeman, [the president] and [himself],” but
one likely candidate was Haldeman’s assistant Larry Higby.

[8]
See Oval Office Conversation 452-3 in which Nixon and Haldeman
discuss a news story that Fred J. Russell was dismissed from his post in
the Interior Department and that presidential aide John Ehrlichman
actually fired Russell. Nixon argued that this was not fair treatment of
Russell, who later became the U.S. Ambassador to
Denmark
. According to a Washington Post article,
“Mr. Nixon formally acknowledged yesterday the resignation of J. Fred
Russell as Under Secretary of the Interior.” See: “Nixon, Aides Meet
on Foreign Policy,” The
Washington
Post (Feb 28, 1971), 2.

[10]
Conversation 456-5 between Richard M. Nixon and H. R. “Bob”
Haldeman in the Oval Office, February 19, 1971, 10:05am – 11:30am.
This discussion was likely provoked by Nixon’s desire to disband the
Appalachia Regional Commission and reduce regional social spending
programs in early 1971. Nixon mentioned John Waters and Jack Williams,
two players in the policy struggle, as the rationale behind using the
tapes to review potentially contentious meetings or ones that did not
get the right press “play” in the administration’s estimation.

[11]
Conversation 456-5.

[12]
Anthony Summers, The
Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (
New York
: Penguin, 2000), 345-360.

(February 16,
2003). Online: http://www.whitehousetapes.org/pages/tapes_rmn.htm#butterfield.
For a more detailed description of the taping system see John Powers,
“The History of
Presidential Audio Recordings and the Archival Issues Surrounding Their
Use,” CIDs Paper, 12 July 1996, 86-108. See also: William Doyle, Inside
the Oval Office: The White House Tapes from FDR to Clinton (New
York: Kodansha International, 1999), 167-196.

[16]
Henry A. Kissinger recollected: “Insofar as the
Cambodia
incursions gave impetus to [Nixon’s] decision [to tape], I was
apparently an unwitting cause as well as target. The purpose was to
prevent me from emerging as the “good guy” on decisions in which I
had taken part.” See: Kissinger, Years
of Upheaval, (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1982), 111.

[17]
One prominent theory is that J. Edgar Hoover stoked Nixon’s
paranoia by telling the president-elect that President Johnson had used
widespread political wiretaps and had even bugged Nixon’s phone lines
and campaign plane. Summers, Arrogance of Power, 314; Haldeman, Ends of Power, 4, 80-81.

[18]
Henry A. Kissinger, Years
of Upheaval, 111-112.

[19]
Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 113. Kissinger’s protestations about the taping
system are also disingenuous since he had a team of secretaries
surveying and transcribing his own phone and meeting conversations, many
of which were taped—a fact that was relatively unknown until nearly
thirty years afterwards. In addition to the tape selections, the
National Security Archive is preparing 22,000 pages of Kissinger’s
telephone conversations transcripts for inclusion in its “Declassified
Documents Online” database available by subscription through ProQuest.

[20]
In addition to the fact that the original tapes have physically
degraded over time—despite the best preservation efforts—the typical
researcher at the National Archives (NARA) uses analog copies of copies
of copies of the originals. The analog nature of recording technology in
the 1970s, and the use of analog tapes for listening copies for the
first three chronological tapes releases has created a variety of
quality control issues for transcription efforts since each generation
of analog audio reproduction entails some loss of quality. Fortunately,
scholars have been able to make arrangements to use
NARA
’s production Digital Audio Tapes (DATs) that, theoretically, have
almost no loss of quality from an original source.

The National
Archive’s initial “Abuse of Power” tapes release in 1996, in
addition to the subsequent first, second, and third chronological
releases, are publicly available only on analog audiocassette. Time,
dirt, and use/listening create a number of quality control issues for
analog audiocassettes.
NARA
’s Fourth Chronological Conversation Tapes release in December 2003
was on digital compact discs, as were the first Fifth Chronological
Release which took place on July 11, 2007. CDs avoid the pitfalls
inherent with the earlier audiocassettes. For the release schedule and
content of each release, see: http://nixon.archives.gov/find/tapes/releases.html

For materials from
the first four chronological releases, the
Miller
Center
at the
University
of
Virginia
has been an excellent source for high-quality audio material, despite
some gaps, available via the internet at http://www.whitehousetapes.org.
We are also grateful to Thomas Blanton, director of the National
Security Archive (NSArchive), for allowing us to do digital transfer
work at home using the best quality audio, including the conversations
included in this article.

[21]
Archivist William Cowell has noted that since the taping system
was unknown to but a handful of Nixon administration officials, the
Secret Service personnel who operated the taping system often used
‘outside’ channels to purchase blank tapes. This apparently included
runs to the local drug store for consumer quality blank reels.

[22]
Because the system was voice—or more accurately sound
activated—there are also dozens of hours of noise preserved for
posterity. Low or quiet talking in this case refers to low volume speech
distorted by its lack of amplitude, typically caused by a person
speaking outside the effective range of the microphone(s).